Today in APIs: Google Offers New Drive Security API

Google launches the Drive Audit API for increased cloud service security. The Koch brothers grow a network of libertarian hackers and coders. Plus: a new API for a Bitcoin index, and Putin signs a law that could block Facebook from Russia.

Google Ups Game in Cloud Service Security with New API

Google has announced an API as part of its Drive for Work to help with security for its cloud service, called the Drive Audit API. This protects confidential information and helps IT managers understand how their employees work.

As Chuck Coulson, head of Google Apps and Drive Technology Partnerships writes in a Google blogpost,

Drive audit helps IT admins view activity on documents, such as uploading and downloading files, renaming files, editing and commenting, and sharing with others. Filters make it easy to sort and find details like IP address, date range, document title and owner’s email address. To make advanced auditing reports easier to manage, admins can set up alerts for important events like files being shared outside the organization.

Some partner examples using the Drive Audit API include Backupify that uses it to safeguard against data loss from user errors, and BetterCloud, who deployed it in their FlashPanel security tool. Other partners include CloudLock and SkyHigh.

The Koch Brothers Grow a Network of Coders and Hackers

At a Lincoln Labs conference held over the weekend, Libertarian hackers and coders gathered for a hackathon, sponsored by an array of Koch funded groups including Generation Opportunity, its youth outreach group; the Libre Initiative, its Hispanic organization; Americans for Prosperity, and i360.

The gathering was the first inaugural conference put on by Lincoln Labs, a year-old club of politically-minded technologists started by three millennials with backgrounds in Republican politics: Garrett Johnson, a former aide to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Aaron Ginn, who worked on Mitt Romney’s digital team; and Chris Abrams, who runs digital operations for Vanity Fair magazine. The group — which adopts the label “conservatarian,” a popular buzzword for the ideological coalition between conservatives and libertarians — was born in 2013 in the aftermath of the failed Republican attempt to regain control of the White House, in which President Obama’s mastery of digital campaigning and data collection trounced Republican efforts to match it.

As Moody notes, the group faces an interesting problem: most of the coders it attracts aren't libertarians, but like the rest of their counterparts in Silicon Valley are largely of a more progressive persuasion. Will the cash prizes and events sway tech minds? Many if not most of the apps were apolitical or nonpartisan. Time will tell.